Lawmakers’ last weeks might finish debate on Delta tunnel

By Dan Walters, CalMatters

This commentary was initially printed by CalMatters. Sign up for his or her newsletters.

Tanned, rested and presumably prepared after a summer season trip break, state legislators will return to the Capitol subsequent week for the ultimate month of their 2025 session.

The session’s last weeks will probably be dominated by payments aimed toward registering blue California’s dislike of and opposition to President Donald Trump. The most outstanding will probably be Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to redraw boundaries of California’s 52 congressional districts, giving Democrats 5 extra seats to counter efforts in Texas to create 5 extra Republican seats.

Despite the Capitol’s fixation on nationwide political maneuvering — tinged by Newsom’s seemingly bid for the White House — there are pending issues that hit nearer to residence. None is extra vital than what’s been kicking round for a minimum of six a long time, a mission to bolster California’s north-to-south shipments of water by bypassing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The mission has passed by a number of names and morphed from a “peripheral canal” carrying water across the Delta to twin tunnels beneath the Delta and, most lately, to a single tunnel known as the Delta Conveyance Project.

Newsom’s administration believes it wants only one thing more to get the greenlight, laws to exempt the mission from the California Environmental Quality Act’s ponderous course of, thereby denying critics the authorized instruments to delay the work.

Newsom had hoped he might clear the CEQA hurdle with a “trailer bill” connected to the state funds accepted in June, making the most of the bulletproof and expedited funds course of.

“For too long, attempts to modernize our critical water infrastructure have stalled in endless red tape, burdened with unnecessary delay,” Newsom stated. “We’re done with barriers. Our state needs to complete this project as soon as possible, so that we can better store and manage water to prepare for a hotter, drier future. Let’s get this built.”

Northern California legislators against the tunnel persuaded their leaders to stall on utilizing a trailer invoice, however Newsom and tunnel advocates, such because the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, will attempt once more throughout the session’s last weeks.

Tunnel backers contend that it could make California’s huge water system, which faucets Northern California rivers to produce water to comparatively arid Southern California through the California Aqueduct, extra dependable by bypassing the environmentally fragile Delta.

That’s true so far as it goes. But opponents say the diversions of Sacramento River water into the tunnel would deprive the Delta of the water it must be a wholesome habitat for fish and different wildlife.

The debate has basically raged alongside these strains for the reason that State Water Project was first constructed within the Sixties. During his first governorship a half-century in the past, Jerry Brown received legislative approval for what was then a canal, solely to have it overturned by voters through a 1982 referendum. Since then variations of the mission have proliferated and been debated however none has superior to the present stage.

Newsom is attempting to sweeten the deal by providing the Delta $200 million to offset the mission’s impacts. But whether or not Newsom can get what he desires from the Legislature stays unsure, as a result of Democratic legislators, who’re a supermajority, are divided roughly alongside geographic strains.

“The Legislature rightly rejected the governor’s ill-conceived plan to fast-track the Delta Tunnel Project in June and should reject it again,” the Legislature’s Delta Caucus declared final week. “Delta communities that will be devastated by this unaffordable and unnecessary project cannot be bought off with $200 million. In fact, no amount of money can compensate for the destruction of thousands of acres of prime farmland and the loss of fisheries and historic tribal resources.”

The division is so sharp that Republicans, though small in quantity, may very well be decisive.

This article was initially printed on CalMatters and was republished underneath the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.